He was born in 1901 in Edinburg, Ill., and studied engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He also attended Yale University before entering the Army Air Corps in World War I.

Harrington began his oil career with Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey. After four years with the Standard affiliates in Mexico and South America, he returned to the United States and was with Shell Oil Company as an engineer during the boom days of Smackover, Ark., and Corsicana.

A position with Marland Oil moved him westward through Kansas, Oklahoma and eventually, in 1926, to the Panhandle oil fields and Amarillo, which would remain Harrington headquarters.

He formed a partnership with Lawrence Hagy in 1927; Stanley Marsh Jr. joined the firm a year later.

The trio leased oil and gas rights on thousands of acres in the Panhandle and Hugoton fields. Together they formed an unmatched team in the field of oil and gas production.

His business activities were spread around the world, as were his friendships. He was a member of the Brooks Club of London and the Travelers of Paris. He was a member of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, the Amarillo Club and the Amarillo Country Club.

He married Sybil Buckingham in 1935.

Harrington later added sizable ranch holdings and an investment firm to his portfolio. As the director of Southwestern Investment Co., he developed business interests worldwide and began a long list of philanthropies.

In 1945, he donated 640 acres of land for Camp Don Harrington, a Boy Scout camp. The bequest was a sign of things to come.

The Don and Sybil Harrington Foundation, established in 1951 with 3,000 shares of Southwestern Public Service Co. common stock, would eventually give millions of dollars to Amarillo and the area in support of education, the arts, the medical community and a myriad of other concerns.

The foundation became a non-profit corporation in 1971.

In 1971, the capital fund of the foundation was a little more than $1 million. When Harrington died in April 1974, most of his estate went to the foundation. When the estate was closed in 1982, the value of the foundation was in excess of $54 million.

Wildcatter fever never left Harrington and he remained active in the oil industry for more than half a century.

"Work was a way of life for Don," Hagy said in an interview. "He worked harder and longer hours than anyone I have ever known. He never quit working until the day he died. Some of us slowed down, but not Don. What he made, he earned."